Father John Misty

The folk-rock trickster talks about the shaky line between his knowingly debauched Father John Misty guise and his life as the newly married Josh Tillman, and what to expect from his forthcoming second album.

There's a song on Fear Fun, the warm 2012 debut from former Fleet Foxes member Josh Tillman's Father John Misty project, called "I'm Writing a Novel"—and wouldn't you know it, that's exactly what the singer/songwriter is up to these days. "I see being a writer as my fourth act, or something," he tells me during an hour-long phone conversation, while he's kicking back at his home in New Orleans. "I don't know what the end game is, though. I have a feeling that the minute I tell myself I'm going to be more serious about it, the writing would immediately begin to suffer."

As Tillman describes the plot of his novel-in-progress, which he says is currently 50,000 words deep, it's clear that being serious isn't a notion that he's taking too, uh, seriously. "It's about this couple named Charles and Agnes Brimley, and Charles is an author writing this book about a herd of post-apocalyptic chihuahuas," Tillman explains, without a hint of humor in his voice. "They go to Salt Lake City, walk by a funeral home, impersonate another couple, and order a '69' casket for themselves—a casket that you can 69 in. While Charles is writing his book, he gets into the casket and realizes that the voice of God is in there, and God’s name is Josh Tillman, and Josh Tillman divulges the secrets of Charles’ universe. I really like how the book is going so far." (His current working titles: Eureka Royale and Operation: Annihilate Pussy.)

Tillman has the tendency to come off as flippant or, at worst, slightly aggressive in interviews; at times, he sounds like he's intentionally blurring the line between where Josh Tillman ends and the ego-inflated, debauched, perfume-hawking Father John Misty guise begins. As the tales of shooting up heroin and dead grandparents from our last interview suggest, he clearly enjoys having fun with notions of persona and truth (or lack thereof), so it makes some cosmic sense that our conversation takes place on April Fool's Day, and he immediately expresses good-natured regret at not planning a series of pranks for the interview.

And, to be clear, Tillman hasn't gone full-blown novelist just yet, as he's also been spending plenty of time putting the finishing touches on his second record, which is due out early next year via Sub Pop. When we spoke, he had just returned from overseeing the mixdown process in Seattle with producer Jonathan Wilson, who also manned the boards on Fear Fun. When I ask him what the new album is called, he demurs, but pointedly clarifies, "It's not called Annihilation Pussy."

Talking about the recent mixing sessions, he says, "I didn’t realize how embarrassing it would be to sit in a room listening to these songs. They're very intimate, but only lyrically. I had more license to indulge this time around, so I was throwing string sections at shit and putting 100 ideas in a song where four would normally do." He makes a point of nothing that "there aren't any real country tunes on it, but it’s got a lot of soul. It's all over the place—people will either think this record is great, or easily the stupidest thing they’ve ever heard, which is my strike zone." When I press him further on the album's sound, he backs away; a few hours later, he tweets me a description that is, if nothing else, illustrative: "If you put Kiss make-up on the cover of [Simon & Garfunkel's] Bookends. That's what it sounds like. I had to come to the coffee shop to tell you." (Tillman currently doesn't have internet at his home.)

Speaking on the album's themes, he's a bit more forthcoming. "It's a concept album about this guy, Josh Tillman, who's engaging in a lot of very prurient, despair-ridden encounters with females," he offers. He recently married filmmaker Emma Elizabeth Tillman—who played a dominatrix in the video for Fear Fun's "Nancy From Now On", and whose short film The History of Caves featured a score written and recorded by Josh—so the semi-autobiographical exploits detailed on the LP are a catalog of a time when Tillman "had too much time on my hands two years ago and was on a crazed trip. Things that reek of despair are typically funny—if not to us, than to God, or something. Any time you listen to an album, you’re like God watching little human activities transpire underfoot."

Wedded bliss is as much of a throughline in the new material as past misbehavior. "Conventional wisdom is that when it comes to interesting songwriting, love is a dead end," Tillman muses. "For me, though, it ended up being a pretty insurmountable topic without having to resort to clichés. It’s a very funny, very sad, kind of uplifting album about love—there's nothing about isolation because of technology or anything like that." Other thematic material explored on the album takes a more (let's say) specific focus: "There's a song where a dog bites my dick. It's great."

But, seriously: Tillman's ability to crack wise is matched by his ability to speak intelligently and at-length on many topics, including how the highly performative conceptualism behind Father John Misty's presentation juxtaposes with his ever-growing fanbase. "The live show has been this satire of rock show artifice over the last couple of years, which was very satisfying and fun, but I don’t even know where I’m going with this," Tillman admits, ruminating on the limitations of his fame-debauched, at-times incredibly funny stage persona. "I definitely want my audience to have some kind of cathartic experience, so I’m not being particularly precious when I play shows. It raises interesting questions for people."

Although the folk-indebted sounds of Tillman's music may cause some to hear his tales of taking shamanistic psychedelics and "smoking everything in sight" with reverence, it's hard to imagine large crowds of people getting their daily gospel from a guy who once suggested that he was coming out with his own line of toilet paper during a show. Nonetheless, he fears that the drug-addled Father John Misty character might not be going down exactly how he planned: "Every now and then, I lock eyes with someone at a show, and in my soul I'm just like, 'Oh, no.' There's a total disconnect, which is really freaky—in someone else's mind, I'm just a total abstraction."

Potential mischaracterizations of intent aside, Tillman is increasingly in the air lately, whether he's opening shows for Lana Del Rey, backing up Beck during a few recent late-night TV performances, or collaborating with T. Bone Burnett on the song "The Angry River", which soundtracked the season finale of HBO's twisted buddy-cop drama "True Detective". "While I was recording my vocals, T. Bone's dog ended up eating a bunch of weed-laced Tootsie Rolls and had to be taken to the hospital," Tillman laughs. "They had to take their dog to an emergency veterinarian, so that really broke the sanctimony of things. The dog was OK in the end, but it was a gold mine for jokes, like, 'This dog has never heard music like this before.'"

Even as Tillman manages to stay busy, one obstacle continues to stand in his way: the notoriously difficult Sunday crossword puzzle in The New York Times. "Fuck that," he says while talking about his downtime hobby, which he says he indulges in while "stroking a cat" at night. "When I get to the Saturday puzzle, I'm usually guessing words," he confesses. "Really, you have to cheat. If the two options I'm presented with are 'cheat' and 'give up and cry', I'm going to cheat."

"Any time you say 'I really should be writing songs' before you sit down to write a song, you’re going to write some really terrible shit."

Pitchfork: You moved from Los Angeles to New Orleans five months ago. What are the differences between the two cities, in your experience?

Josh Tillman: Nobody works in New Orleans, everybody’s on their own time table. The pace initially gave me a bit of an existential crisis—when I lived in L.A., it was like, “I’m going to go to the post office and get a coffee,” which ends up taking nine hours. And then I go to the bar. That would be my day. In New Orleans, there are just so many hours in the day, so I end up being like, “I really should be writing songs.” But any time that sentence comes out of your mouth before you sit down to write a song, you’re going to write some really terrible shit.

Tillman at Avast! Recording Co. in Seattle

Pitchfork: Part of the Father John Misty image involves embodying a lothario persona, but marriage limits how far you can take that persona in real life now.

JT: I can see how monogamy can be synonymous with marriage—conceptually, they're mirror images of each other—but marriage increasingly doesn’t mean anything, especially because it's a secular institution. It’s a blank medium, and you do what you want with it. Maybe there are evil patriarchal parameters that have been handed down through the ages, but I see marriage as a form of creative expression. Personally, I enjoy monogamy—humiliation and sex are more synonymous that way.

I have this self-destructive streak, it's just the way I'm wired. I’ll be walking down the street and see a guy sitting behind a dumpster drinking and I’ll be like, "That looks great." There are elements of my songs that make them be perceived as anthems for a certain attitude or behavior, but it's more nuanced than that. It isn’t political—I'm not like, "I have the right to behave like this, so I’m going to behave like this, and everyone should be free to do whatever." They're just accounts.

Pitchfork: As your audience grows, do you feel pressure to tailor your own artistic vision to please the masses?

JT: When you're writing songs, everything blacks out. Then, when you’re recording, you’re thinking, "I just want to do the best I can for my little song babies." For this new record, more so than Fear Fun, the material feels dead until it reaches the audience. It’s a different album in that I want to give people certain feels.

I hesitate to say it because it's sounds so magnanimous, but I really do love my audience. If this album doesn't do what I'm hoping that it does for people, I'm willing to call it a failure—I won't be like, "you imbeciles!" There's different things that I've set out to communicate this time, and the album is less one-dimensional as a result. It's a minefield to try to address love in a way that is moving without triggering all of the pre-conceived notions, and the subject is so riddled with societal ambivalence. I'm just trying to hold somebody's hand through this thing that I've experienced.